Rome that, at that day at least, men must look for the heroic.  They were not indisposed to the idea that a true Church which had lost all this might yet regain it, and they were willing to wait and see what the English Church would do to recover what it had lost; but there was obviously a long way to make up, and they came to think that there was no chance of its overtaking its true position.  Of course they knew all that was so loudly urged about the abuses and mischiefs growing out of the professed severity of Rome.  They knew that in spite of it foreign society was lax; that the discipline of the confessional was often exercised with a light rein.  But if the good side of it was real, they easily accounted for the bad:  the bad did not destroy, it was a tacit witness to the good.  And they knew the Latin Church mainly from France, where it was more in earnest, and exhibited more moral life and intellectual activity, than, as far as Englishmen knew, in Italy or Spain.  There was a strong rebound from insular ignorance and unfairness, when English travellers came on the poorly-paid but often intelligent and hard-working French clergy; on the great works of mercy in the towns; on the originality and eloquence of De Maistre, La Mennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert.

These ideas took possession of a remarkable mind, the index and organ of a remarkable character.  Mr. W.G.  Ward had learned the interest of earnest religion from Dr. Arnold, in part through his close friend Arthur Stanley.  But if there was ever any tendency in him to combine with the peculiar elements of the Rugby School, it was interrupted in its nascent state, as chemists speak, by the intervention of a still more potent affinity, the personality of Mr. Newman.  Mr. Ward had developed in the Oxford Union, and in a wide social circle of the most rising men of the time—­including Tait, Cardwell, Lowe, Roundell Palmer—­a very unusual dialectical skill and power of argumentative statement:  qualities which seemed to point to the House of Commons.  But Mr. Newman’s ideas gave him material, not only for argument but for thought.  The lectures and sermons at St. Mary’s subdued and led him captive.  The impression produced on him was expressed in the formula that primitive Christianity might have been corrupted into Popery, but that Protestantism never could.[107] For a moment he hung in the wind.  He might have been one of the earliest of Broad Churchmen.  He might have been a Utilitarian and Necessitarian follower of Mr. J.S.  Mill.  But moral influences of a higher kind prevailed.  And he became, in the most thoroughgoing yet independent fashion, a disciple of Mr. Newman.  He brought to his new side a fresh power of controversial writing; but his chief influence was a social one, from his bright and attractive conversation, his bold and startling candour, his frank, not to say reckless, fearlessness of consequences, his unrivalled skill in logical fence, his unfailing good-humour and love of fun, in which his personal clumsiness set off the vivacity and nimbleness of his joyous moods.  “He was,” says Mr. Mozley, “a great musical critic, knew all the operas, and was an admirable buffo singer.”—­No one could doubt that, having started, Mr. Ward would go far and probably go fast.